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When Cheapo Disaster Strikes


My car finally died on me. It was a nice looking Subaru Forester - only a 2009 but had 191,000 miles on it when she passed away this past week. She carried me on her final trip back from WV when the engine literally croaked driving up the hill to my house. She stalled out a couple of times and was done. My mechanic checked it out and the engine was officially blown.

I got a really great cheapo deal on it back in 2014 - $11,000 with 136k miles - loaded with leather, NAV, huge sunroof, etc. It ended up needing several thousand dollars of work, making the car total cost probably about $15,000. There were other signs that it was getting to be time - a little bit of transmission tugging on steep hills, some stiffness in the power steering while getting it warmed up. So, it was nearing the end. I just sold it to a guy who I think was going to swap the engine and resell it, so I let it go for $1000.

All in all, that amounts to about $3750/yr. which I think would rival the depreciation rate of most new cars in the $30k+ range. However, with new car insurance costs and the ridiculous "car property" taxes that Virginia assesses based on the value of the car, the additional annual net costs of a new car are much higher.

Fortunately, Mr. Cheapo always has a backup plan and keeps an additional vehicle in his stable for just such emergencies, among other things:


This is my farm truck - a 1994 Mazda B3000 (rebranded Ford Ranger) with 208,000 miles on it. I also picked her up in 2014 for all the many occasions one needs a truck while living out in the country. Depending on what time of the year this thing rolled off the assembly line, I either wouldn't have been old enough to drive it or not without a licensed driver in the car since I only got my learner's permit on my 16th birthday of that year.

I bought this baby for $1000, but she's needed about another $2500 worth of work over that time - new clutch, new radiator and new tires, but she's now running great. The nice thing about this truck is that there are a lot fewer things that can go wrong on it (knocks wood) over a new car with all the bells and whistles and electronics everywhere. It has a no A/C, no cruise control, manual transmission, manual crank windows, and manual locking hubs for the 4WD (yes, you actually have to go out and turn the dials on the front wheels to enable 4WD).

I have to say, she looks pretty good for a 24 year old truck, but it wasn't always this way. Here at Cheapo, we're all about making old things new again and doing it on the cheap. This is what she looked like when I got her:


On the exterior, I painted the rims, bumpers and touched up all the paint gouges, did some plastic restoration for the trims.

The inside was also a mess. It took several treatments with my Rug Doctor to get all the grime out of the carpet. The center console was falling apart, so I replaced the cover for that. The headliner was also falling down as was so often the case from older cars from that era, so I removed the ceiling and painted it black with Plasti-Dip. Here's what the interior looked like before the cheapo restoration:





And after the cheapo treatment:



So, it's at least no longer a gross truck to drive around in and maybe even has a little retro hipster appeal (or that's what I'm telling myself anyway). At the very least, it'll take some of the desperation and poor/rushed decision making out of buying another car since I'll already have another means of getting around.

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